(Feb. 2, 2015) Chief of Police Michael Biasotti, a member of the Treatment Advocacy Center board of directors, retired last Friday after ten years with the New Windsor Police department (“New Windsor police chief ends long career,” Mid Hudson News, Jan. 31).
Biasotti is immediate past president of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police and serves on the board of both the New York State Law Enforcement Accreditation Council and New York’s Executive Committee on Counter Terrorism.
As a prominent member of law enforcement, Biasotti has been a resounding voice for the right of people with severe mental illness to seek treatment, even when they are unable to seek it.
People “who refuse, or are too sick to seek treatment voluntarily, become a law enforcement responsibility,” Biasotti has said. “Unfortunately law enforcement often ends up being a last resort…it shouldn’t be that way. Treatment keeps patients safer. It keeps the public safer and it keeps officers safer. But more importantly, it’s the humane thing to do.”
Biasotti received accolades from the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York State for “outstanding advocacy on behalf of the seriously mentally ill” in December 2014.
Although Biasotti is leaving his role with New Windsor police, he promises to continue advocating on behalf of people with serious mental illness.
As he left, police officers lined up to salute the departing chief. The Treatment Advocacy Center joins them now, in saluting Biasotti and celebrating his well-deserved retirement.
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